Si Anne nanlaban?!!!
I’ve heard and read a lot of hype from my Facebook timeline about how great of a movie Buy Bust was that I convinced my partner Marcus that we watch and review it. It helped that it has subtitles. So here is what we think . I decided to post his opinion first so you can read a foreigner’s point of view he is a real movie critic.
So what we think of Buy Bust movie:
What Marcus thinks of it? His POV
It was nice to hear a Filipino movie had English subtitles for me to read, though I’m not sure they were totally necessary for BuyBust. The movie starts off with a nice, realistic interrogation scene. A bit drawn out but sets a good tone. Because I do not know the actor’s histories, I judge them on performance, and they did well. I found out later that many are famous, which I imagine makes it more enjoyable to those who know them. We then see some police training that seems pretty realistic. We meet our heroes and off we go into the story.
The director does a good job setting up tension. The choice of music helps a lot. Good locations, lots of extras. The only real downfall, on a technical side, is that the audio quality is lacking through the whole movie. From what I understand, this is pretty standard for a Filipino movie. Come on people, your images are great. Make sound better!
Once the story is set up, the action starts…and it never stops. So much gunfire, done very well. If any of the shots were digitally done, I couldn’t tell. Everything seemed like authentic gunfire to me. Where I was a bit confused was in the knife stabbing. It was done well too, mostly, except some times I had a hard time distinguishing between a knife stab and a punch, because they often use the same sound effect. That, and the fact that some characters seemingly take stabs to the gut and quickly shake it off. There even seemed to be a few people that took some gunshots that magically disappeared the next scene. Oh, and look out for a very special scene in the middle of the battle. Anne Curtis does a long, elaborate fight sequence done in ONE SHOT. That means that it had to be flawlessly choreographed and executed. Great job from her and the movie makers on that one.
The biggest downfall in the film is the mix in tone. The director obviously tried very hard to give the film a sense of realism, but then just tossed it away at times, jumping to very comical action moves we would expect in an 80’s Schwarzenegger film. I feel both styles are enjoyable on their own, but I think one needs to be used through the whole film. Is it realistic or just fun action?
The storyline is really irrelevant. I know there are some political comments made in the film that are relevant to what is happening today, but who is paying off someone else really doesn’t mean much in this film. Go see this movie if you enjoy a film with a large dead body count.
What Earth think of it? My POV
First of all I would like to commend Anne Curtis for the impeccable delivery and acting. It is amazing to see raw action from someone we see as fun and bubbly on TV and even during her concerts to become the complete opposite of her in Buy Bust mivie. I love how fearless, fierce and great she was here. If anything else she definitely is the star of this movie and her training on martial arts/self defense paid really well. I would love to hear girls everywhere talk about how they want to be like Anne with all her skills as an actress. Very versatile and compelling!
Now let’s go to the entire movie. The raves is half true. It is definitely a new kind of adventure/action movie that we have not seen yet. The non-stop two hour action scenes/fight scenes was restless and unending it made me tired. Drained me a lot! I actually dozed off twice during the entire movie while some action scenes were even happening. The action scenes was so continuous that it became too boring and ordinary for me that I felt like this is all what the movie has to offer. Raw fights. Very Eric Mati directed film.
It would have been great if they edited some of the fight scenes that are already redundant. Two hours of it was too much. The movie started strong esp with the musical scoring at the first 1/4 of the film, then somehow it went weird with untimed sound scoring. Some of it worked some was just out of it.
I did like the comical relief delivered by Alex Calleja as Tepan. I also loved the on-screen tandem of Brandon Vera and Anne.
But this all boils down to an award for Anne, si Anne Nanlaban, Nagwagi!
Buy Bust movie is now showing in all Ohilippine Cibemas and will be showing in U.S. on August 10,2018.
